


Get It Together

by fourteencandles (thingsbaker)



Series: Here's Us Together [2]
Category: Entourage
Genre: F/M, M/M, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 20:07:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3742000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingsbaker/pseuds/fourteencandles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night they get back from Seattle, Vince gets drunk with Turtle playing Madden while Eric sulks in his bedroom. When Turtle gives him a weird look, Vince hints that they’re having a work-related disagreement and lets Turtle draw his own conclusions. It’s close enough to the truth. Vince ended things mostly because he figured they could either stay friends and stay in business or they could fuck each other up something fierce, and a little bit because he’d started wanting Eric all the time, and that wasn’t good for business at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in 2007 and first posted on livejournal when I was writing as fourteencandles. Great thanks to shoshannagold for beta reading work!

The night they get back from Seattle, Vince gets drunk with Turtle playing Madden while Eric sulks in his bedroom. When Turtle gives him a weird look, Vince hints that they’re having a work-related disagreement and lets Turtle draw his own conclusions. It’s close enough to the truth. Vince ended things mostly because he figured they could either stay friends and stay in business or they could fuck each other up something fierce, and a little bit because he’d started wanting Eric all the time, and that wasn’t good for business at all.  
  
When Turtle heads to bed, Vince does, too, only he somehow ends up in Eric’s room, holding a highball glass full of gin. Eric’s in the bathroom, brushing his teeth, and Vince can see only his shoulder reflected in the mirror. His bed is neatly made and there are two piles of clothes on the floor, some of which Vince recognizes as his own. It’s like the trip never happened, except for the part where Vince can’t seem to move out of the doorway or any closer to Eric.  
  
Eric walks out of the bathroom and jumps. “Jesus,” he says. He shakes his head. “What are you doing?” Vince hears the missing word: what are you doing  _here_ , and he takes a sip of his drink, then shrugs.   
  
“You have my stuff,” he says, even though he hasn’t thought about it until now.  
  
Eric nods. “I put your shaving kit in your room already,” he says. He sits on the bed. “I figured I’d get the clothes out for laundry tomorrow.”  
  
Vince nods. He feels weird, standing in Eric’s room. He’s conscious of the door being closed behind him, of the light being dim, of Eric being in his boxers and a T-shirt. These aren’t things he’s ever been bothered by before. He clears his throat and takes a sip of his gin. “OK,” he says. “Uh, good night, then.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eric says. Vince is in the hallway before he remembers he had a point, he was going to go in and ask for the painting he picked up in Seattle. He stops at the door, though, and doesn’t feel like he can just open it. He doesn’t want to knock, either, because that’s just too weird, too formal for a guy who two nights ago gave him a killer blowjob. So instead he goes to bed and finishes half of the drink before he passes out on top of the covers.  
  
Vince wakes up the next morning with a headache and a neck ache and a dull pain in his chest that he wants to believe is also related to the hangover. He drags himself out of bed and down to the kitchen, doesn’t say anything until he’s drunk half of the hangover shake Johnny’s cooked up. “You and E have a fight?” Johnny asks.  
  
“What are you talking about?” Vince asks, looking up and around. It’s just him and Johnny in the kitchen, no sign of Eric or Turtle.  
  
“You seemed a little weird last night,” Johnny says. “And you look a little fucked up.”  
  
Johnny has an idea that there is — was — more than friendship between Vince and Eric. They’ve talked about it obliquely, before, but Vince has never confirmed anything. And now, there’s nothing to talk about, because it’s over, it’s over for good. His shirt smells like scotch and sweat. He rubs his neck. “Nothing happened,” Vince says.  
  
Johnny grunts. “You want, I could kick him around a little.”  
  
Vince looks up, but he doesn’t see anything on Johnny’s face but brotherly bravado, so he shakes his head. “It’s cool,” he says. “We’re cool, don’t worry about it.”  
  
“You just let me know,” Johnny says. He sits at the table, in front of a stack of printed papers.   
  
Vince sips his drink, then reaches over and snags the top page. “What is this, you reading for something?”  
  
“It’s for that anger management class,” he says.  
  
Vince glances at the page. “Step one, remove yourself from the situation,” he reads. Johnny has been in court-mandated anger management since an incident with the security guards on the Universal lot. Vince isn’t sure it will do much good, but it’s keeping Johnny busy and out of trouble. He slides the paper back across the table. “That sounds like good advice, man.”  
  
“I’m learning,” Johnny says. “I think this whole thing, it’s been for the best. I mean, I’m starting to understand, with Dr. Linda’s help, that I’ve really had a lot of negative energy holding me down.”  
  
“Hearing a negative answer from every girl in Hollywood’ll do that to ya,” Turtle says, shuffling into the kitchen. “E called. Said he’d meet us at Ari’s later.”  
  
“Fuck me,” Vince says, “I forgot we had that today.”  
  
“Yeah? Big meeting?”  
  
Vince shrugs. He has no idea, really. Every meeting with Ari is probably a big deal, but he usually has Eric there to remind him of exactly what needs to be said. Today, he has a feeling he’ll be flying blind. “I’m gonna get a shower,” Vince says, and pushes away from the table.  
  
He showers, dries off, and takes a look at himself in the mirror. His eyes are a little bloodshot, but he’s OK, otherwise. He pulls on clean jeans and a shirt and then sits on his bed. The meeting with Ari shouldn’t be a big deal, but he’s nervous anyway, because he’s not sure if things are going to be weird with him and Eric. So he walks down the hall and knocks on Turtle’s door. “Turtle, man, you carrying?” he asks.  
  
“Jesus, Vince, it’s like 10 in the morning.”  
  
“It’s practically noon,” Vince says, and takes the joint back to his room.  
  
He goes stoned and hungry. He can’t remember the exact time of the meeting so they show up half an hour early and sit on the couch just outside of Ari’s office, waiting for him to finish some kind of telephone conference. Usually, Vince would just swing into the office, but today it seems all right to hang out watching Turtle and Drama fight over their new GameBoy Advance Super X. Lloyd brings him a bottle of water and asks, “Where’s your fabulous manager?”  
  
“You know, I’m not even sure,” Vince says, and tries to smile.  
  
Eric shows up right on time. He looks fine, Vince notes, not a hair out of place. He has on slacks and a blue button-down shirt, a little dressed up, and Vince starts to wonder if this really is an important meeting. He rubs his mouth and watches Eric look down. Nothing between them has changed, Vince tells himself, and he’s glad for the buzz because it makes it seem true.   
  
“You can go in, now,” Lloyd says, grinning, and Vince smiles back and follows Eric inside. He makes himself sit on the couch next to Eric and keeps his face blank. Usually, he’d be able to meet Eric’s eye and understand what’s going on, but Eric isn’t looking at him. Eric is, instead, studying Ari’s windows like he’s never seen them before, like he’s thinking about installing some himself.  
  
“So what’s the word, Ari?” Vince says. Eric is sitting up so stiffly that Vince thinks he could maybe tip over and break him, shatter him into tiny sharp Eric pieces. There’s at least two feet of space between them. The meeting is a nothing meeting, which is good, because Vince sits next to Eric and feels like hell the whole time. Ari wants them to settle on a script. Vince hasn’t read shit in the last month, but he doesn’t want to say that, so instead he says, “It’s not like you’ve sent anything good over.”  
  
Vince sees Eric wince. Usually, in these meetings, Eric backs him up. Usually, Eric doesn’t let him walk into Ari’s traps, either. Today, though, Vince glances over and sees Eric pinch the bridge of his nose as Ari whirls on Eric.  
  
“I haven’t sent anything good, E?” Ari asks, and Vince stares at Eric.   
  
Eric sighs, and for a minute Vince thinks he’s going to throw him under the bus, he’s going to make him look dumb in front of Ari. But E says, “It has been pretty shitty lately.”  
  
“Oh ho, you asked for it. I’ll send you a mother-fucking cartload. You’ll have so many scripts you’ll need oxen to haul the fucking wagon around. Do they still make oxen, like are they still around? Jesus Christ, you’d better hope so.” Ari slams his hands down on the desk. “Lloyd, get me every script that’s out there, no, get me two of every script that’s out there. If you run out of paper, call E and he’ll help you chop down the trees himself.”  
  
“All right, all right,” Eric says. “It’s not volume we need, Ari, it’s quality. Ease off.”  
  
“Ease — your entire fucking job is to help him get a project, and you have a backlog? You want me to get you Hooked on Phonics, E, will that help? Or is the reading getting in the way of your jerking off? You need to cut back to ten hours a day, there, save your eyesight?”  
  
“I get off just fine on thinking about firing you,” Eric says. “Remember that time? That’s lasted me this long, but I could always use a refresher.”  
  
Vince looks between them, and he can’t tell if he should step in. He can’t tell if Eric wants his help, and Eric isn’t looking at him. Eric won’t look at him. Vince stares at his hands and barely listens to the two of them tossing insults back and forth. By the end of the meeting, he’s pretty sure all that’s been established is they still need a new project. He shakes Ari’s hand as they leave, anyway, and keeps his head down, hoping his pupils aren’t too dilated.  
  
In the hall, he says, “Am I in trouble?”  
  
Eric looks startled. “With Ari?”  
  
“With you,” Vince says, and Eric looks away.  
  
“It’s fine,” Eric says.  
  
They step into the garage and the valet pulls Eric’s car up first, and Vince starts toward it out of habit. “Actually, I’ve got a meeting,” Eric says, and Vince stops with his hand on the door handle.  
  
“E,” Vince starts, but Eric waves him off.  
  
“Look, we’re cool,” Eric says, and he pats Vince’s shoulder. It should be comforting, but as Vince watches him drive away, he feels a little bit like he’s been brushed off.  
  
The next morning, when Vince tries to catch Eric after breakfast, he has to run to the office to pick up something he forgot. That evening, Eric calls Turtle’s phone to say he’s got a dinner meeting and they should go out without him. He keeps it up until Vince doesn’t want to talk to him, anymore, until he’s so tired of trying that he’s actually glad Eric’s avoiding him. Things are too weird.  
  
It’s not like they don’t see each other, because Eric makes it home for meals, and they hang out with the other guys and go to meetings together and all of that. They just don’t spend any time together. Vince tells himself this is for the best, that maybe they need a sort-of clean break to get back to a normal friendship, after all this time. This is what he wanted, after all; this is what he asked for. And less time with Eric makes it easier not to think about him all the time, so really, everything’s going according to plan.   
  
Then, one day at lunch, Turtle says, “So what’s up, E, where you been recently, anyway? I know you’re all Hollywood business mogul now, but seriously, man.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eric says. He’s sitting on the opposite side of the table from Vince, in the opposite corner, and when he talks he seems to be addressing Turtle. Par for the course. “About that, look, guys, I’m sorry. I just – I should’ve mentioned this before now. You remember Gillian?”  
  
Vince stares at his plate. “Ari’s new client?”  
  
“Red hair, nice tits?” Johnny says.  
  
“Yeah,” Eric says. “She’s running that new drama on Showtime.”  
  
“You think there’s something there for me?” Johnny asks.  
  
“You fucking her?” Turtle asks.  
  
“We’ve been spending a lot of time together,” Eric says. It’s painful, the information just dribbling out of him. Like the time Eric broke the window at Vince’s place playing street baseball when they were ten. Took him half an hour in the kitchen just to get it out, and that was just telling Vince’s mom.  
  
Vince sighs and puts his hands on either side of his plate. “Jesus, E, just spit it out.”  
  
“She didn’t have a manager,” he says. “Her old one quit, moved back to New Mexico.” Vince feels a real flare of panic and pain, and he looks up. Eric’s still facing Turtle. “So I told her I’d do it.”  
  
It’s like acting: Vince keeps his breathing even, keeps his eyes very still, doesn’t move his mouth at all. He can take anything, he can go through this weird avoidance, the awkwardness, all of that so long as he knows Eric’s going to be around at the end. As long as he knows they can still be friends, right back where they started. If Eric quits, he doesn’t know what he’ll do; he’s never considered it until right now.  
  
“So what, you’re like a real manager, again?” Eric glares at Johnny. “What, I mean, like a company.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eric says, and he looks over at Vince just briefly. “It doesn’t change anything, really.” Vince looks away, at the counter. There’s a pie sitting under a glass cover, and Vince squints, tries to imagine what it would taste like. He does this when he acts, too, looks for something in the background to notice. It makes him seem contemplative. “I’m just gonna be a little busier.”   
  
“Are. You. Fucking. Her?” Turtle says, leaning forward, which draws Vince’s attention away from the pie.  
  
Eric shrugs. That means yes, and Vince sits back. He puts his hands on his abs and tightens them and holds very still.  
  
“Well, at least we know this is going to end in disaster,” Turtle says, and Eric laughs and Vince makes himself do the same. But it comes out wrong, he thinks, because he doesn’t relax his abs, so the sound is high, forced; he’d like a second take on it.  
  
Eric spends the weekend with Gillian, and every time Vince sees him for the next week or so, he’s on the phone with her. Vince doesn’t care. He really doesn’t. He doesn’t care so much that he brings two girls to dinner on the night that Eric brings Gillian, and he takes them both home and they make enough noise that even Turtle is angry with him in the morning.  
  
“A little consideration is all I’m asking,” he says when Vince sits at the table. He picks up his plate and walks out, which leaves Vince in the last place in the world he wants to be: alone with Eric.  
  
For once, Eric doesn’t cut and run, probably because Vince wants him to. Instead, Eric has his hands folded over the morning’s copy of Variety. His eyes are flat, his face pulled into that perfect chastising smirk. “Is this how it’s gonna be, now?” he asks.  
  
Vince leans back and spreads his hands. “I’m just moving on, E,” he says. “You’ve done it, so I can, too, right?”  
  
“Right,” Eric says. “Right. You could.” He stands up, takes his coffee cup in one calm hand. For a minute, Vince watches just that, just the steady way Eric’s holding his mug, and he sees the tension in his arm and knows – absolutely fucking knows – that Eric wants to throw it at him. He wishes for it. He pictures the shattering sounds in his mind, almost closes his eyes, almost misses hearing Eric clear his throat. “Jesus, Vince, I wish that was true,” he says, and then walks out of the kitchen.  
  
They have a meeting with Ari that morning. Eric leaves the house early, saying he needs to talk to someone about Gillian’s contract, which Vince is pretty sure is a bullshit excuse to make sure they don’t have to ride together. Which is fine, except Vince wishes he would have thought of something first. Instead, he hits Turtle up again and is nicely mellowed out when they arrive at MGA.  
  
Ari is hyper-active and a good distraction from the fact that Eric won’t sit on the couch with Vince, and won’t even look at him directly. Vince is only half-listening to the conversation, but he tunes back in when Ari starts yelling.  
  
“We signed a contract, E! They get to do this. There’s a clause and they’re exercising it!”  
  
“You said this would never be an issue,” Eric says, leaning forward. “Goddammit, Ari, who expects a nude scene in a fucking action movie?”  
  
“Uh, hello, everyone,” Ari says. “Tits and ass, baby, and since Vince’s only got one of the two, guess which one they want to put on screen.”  
  
Vince shakes his head. “What?”  
  
“Welcome back,” Ari says. “I was starting to wonder what planet Turtle’s getting his crop from. Jesus Christ, tune in, we’re literally talking about saving your ass.”  
  
“They’re exercising the clause in the contract,” Eric says. “They add 300 K, they get one ass shot.”  
  
“I signed that?” Vince says, sitting up. He’s done a nude scene before, for  _Head On_ , but it wound up getting cut and Vince was relieved. “Fuck, E, why did you let me sign that?”  
  
“We talked about this,” Eric says, and he manages not to look at Vince even while speaking to him. “It’s a standard clause, and Ari said there was no fucking chance –“  
  
“I never say never,” Ari says.  
  
“I thought the whole point of this was that it’s high class action,” Vince says.  
  
“Yeah,” Ari says, “and your ass is going to add a certain cachet.”  
  
Vince groans. “So what are my options?”  
  
“Options? I don’t think you even get to choose between boxers or briefs, Vin,” Ari says. “You do the fucking shot, you take the money, and you hope the movie sells so well that you never have to do one again.”  
  
“Or,” Eric says, “you drop out.”  
  
Vince looks over, and for a moment, Eric meets his eyes. The usual mix of  _fuck it, whatever you want_ , is there, and Vince feels comforted, he feels like Eric’s back, like everything is going to be OK.   
  
Then Ari says, “You need this movie,” and Eric turns to him, and instead of growling he shrugs. “E, you know this. You both know. You drop out of this project and the only offer we’ll have left will be Full Frontal Cocksucking 2, Vinnie and Rob Schneider.” His hands explode outward like stars. “You’re getting a reputation, Vince, and it’s not the one you want. You have to do this movie.”  
  
Vince swallows. He hates nothing more than being backed into a corner. Usually, at this point, he’d be able to sit back and listen to Eric chew on Ari for a while, but when he looks over he sees exhaustion, Eric’s hands clasped together between his knees.  
  
“He’s probably right,” Eric says, and shrugs again. Vince feels desperate and worried, and suddenly all he wants is to get out of the room. All he wants is not to think about this. He wants things back to where they were before, where he could just count on Eric to take care of him. He closes his eyes, and hears Eric’s voice go higher. “But you could threaten, couldn’t you?”  
  
“E, when I say I’ve done everything, do you think I mean that I’ve simply exhausted the words in the Amish dictionary? Are you fucking kidding me, I was a lion on this. I was a fucking mama bear protecting her favorite cub’s virgin ass from fucking poachers.” Vince hears the crinkle of Ari’s suit and looks up to see him sitting on the arm of the couch, his hands outstretched as if pleading. “I have done everything I can,” he says. “Vince, you’ve got to do this.”  
  
Vince nods. He doesn’t look over at Eric, because he knows there’s no help to be had. “All right,” he says.  
  
“I’m sorry, kid.”  
  
Vince shrugs. He stands up; his head feels loose, his shoulders feel heavy. “Whatever, I signed it,” he says. “But see if you can get 500, OK? That’ll sound like a better excuse when my mom asks.”  
  
“Money I can do,” Ari says. He claps Vince on the shoulder, almost a consoling clap, as he leaves. Vince keeps his head down, doesn’t talk to the other guys, doesn’t join in when Turtle starts quizzing Eric over the meeting and Johnny joins in with his own experiences.  
  
“Of course they had to cut it, what with the V-chip ratings and all,” Johnny says, and Turtle snorts.  
  
“Yeah, and those studio concerns over not wanting to blind anyone by showing your pasty white ass.”  
  
Outside, Eric walks to his own car, while Johnny and Turtle head the other way. “We goin’ to lunch, or what?” Turtle calls, standing with the driver’s door open.  
  
He can picture that meal precisely. Vince not talking to Eric, Eric not talking to him, the guys trying to cover, Johnny saying it’s no big deal, Turtle telling him how it’ll just mean more pussy in the future, all of it stupid and awkward. He shakes his head. “You guys go ahead,” he says, waving them all off, not looking at Eric. “I’m gonna call Julie.”   
  
He does call Julie. And then Jessica. Then Rita, then Claire, then Becki and Becky and Betsy. He calls everyone he knows, over the course of a month. In between girls, he takes calls from Ari and lets Eric leave voice mails, agrees to a script rewrite without reading it, has lunch with the boys every day, and develops a real affection for a smoky brand of single-malt scotch. After a particularly amorous night with the scotch and girl whose name starts, he’s pretty sure, with a V, he wakes up to a call from Turtle.  
  
“E’s fucking moving out,” he says as a greeting.  
  
“What?”  
  
“He’s moving his shit to some crap-ass place off Wilshire. When the fuck you coming home, Vin, to fix this?”  
  
Vince looks over at the empty bottle and full bed beside him. “I’ll be there tonight.”  
  


* * *

  
  
When he walks in, Turtle and Johnny are sitting on the couch, watching some reality show. Eric is perched on the edge of an armchair. Vince stops in the doorway. “So I’m here,” he says.  
  
Turtle and Johnny both turn around, then look at each other in a way that would usually make Vince roll his eyes at Eric. Instead, he looks straight ahead. “What shit are you watching?”  
  
“Total shit,” Johnny says. His performance is, as always, stilted, overdrawn. Pure drama. “I mean. We should be watching a movie.”  
  
“Yeah,” Turtle chimes in, scrambling to his feet. “Look, we’ll go get one. You two stay here.”  
  
He and Johnny are out the door before Turtle’s words are complete. Vince shakes his head and takes a few steps in. “What’s their deal?”  
  
“Their deal is they think you and I are about to kill each other,” Eric says. His voice is even, but it has the gravel in it that Vince recognizes from the neighborhood.   
  
“Are we?” he asks, looking Eric over. He has on a jersey shirt and jeans, hair slicked into perfect order, black shoes spit-shined, silver watch – which he bought with his second major paycheck – sparking on his wrist. Perfectly organized and ordered, just like always. This is the same Eric who’s been scheduling his life for the past five years, the same Eric who’s been laying down the laws of when Vince is allowed to want him and when he isn’t.  
  
Vince makes his steps forward as uneven as possible, which isn’t hard, because he had a quickie with a new bottle before he left Vanessa’s house. This is good, he thinks. Eric should see how fucking messy he can be. Eric should be afraid.  
  
“I told them it’s about a girl,” Eric says. He hasn’t moved.  
  
Vince snorts. “What, so they wouldn’t think you were my girl?” He falls back onto the couch, full length, sprawled out, then lifts himself up on one elbow, perfect for filming. This is his kind of order. “Or was I yours?”  
  
Eric’s eyes are dead cold. “You’re a fucking mess,” he says. “What’d you do, challenge a bottle of gin to a duel?”  
  
“Scotch,” Vince said. “Single-malt, thousand-dollars-a-bottle scotch. What you see here, this is like two hundred dollars’ worth.”  
  
“Yeah, glad you’re getting your money out of it.” Eric stands up and smoothes his shirt, like it needs it, like anything ever moves on this guy. Like he ever unfreezes for even a second. He grabs a jacket off the back of the chair and starts around the couch.  
  
“E,” Vince calls, and sure enough, Eric stops. “You really moving out?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Jesus,” Vince says. “Cut and run, huh?”  
  
Eric turns. The jacket crumples in his arms. “You fucking ran out on me,” he says. “You ended things, Vince. I’m just trying to make sure that something survives.”  
  
“How, by getting a place in Westwood?”  
  
“If I’m not here, maybe you’ll come home, once in a while. Or is that coincidence, you being out all night, every night?” Eric’s arms are crossed tight. “You want some space, Vince, I’ll give you space. Maybe we both need it. We been wound up too tight in this since we were fifteen.” Eric rubs one hand through his gelled up hair, and Vince feels a flare of painful want tingle through his chest, down to his fingers. He sits up and feels how unsteady he really is, so he keeps his head down.  
  
“E,” he says, but he’s not sure what else to say. He’s sorry, he wants him back, he’s tired and a little scared. He just needs Eric to come back to him, to cave. “I’ve been thinking, I might fuck another guy.”  
  
Eric takes a sharp breath. “What the fuck -”  
  
“I did before, you know,” Vince says. “Before you came out here. Maybe I’ll -”  
  
“Fine,” Eric says. “You wanna ruin your goddamned career, you fucking go ahead. Fuck every guy in WeHo, blow your director on camera, whatever, Vince. You’re gonna do what you want to do, that’s pretty damn clear.” Vince laughs. He can hear Eric getting angrier; he’s yelling, now, and that’s something, at least. That’s better than the coldness, that’s better than the silence. “What is this, you’re bored? You’re gay now?”  
  
“Did you think it was just you?” Vince says, looking up, not laughing now. Eric steps back. He shakes his head, presses his fist to his mouth. Vince gets it, he’s crossed some line he didn’t mean to, but there’s no going back. “Everyone wants to fuck me,” Vince says. “Even you.”  
  
Eric shakes his head. “Not me,” he says. “Not anymore.”  
  
“Yeah,” Vince says, “yeah, you do.”  
  
“No,” Eric says, and the way he looks, angry and serious, Vince believes him. “I’m fucking done with this, Vince. I am at the end.”  
  
“Are you quitting?” Vince asks.  
  
“Do you want me to?”  
  
 _Yes_  is on the tip of his tongue, but he looks away from Eric for just a second and starts to feel bad. He starts to feel sick. “I don’t know,” he whispers. “Oh, fuck, E.” Vince tips over onto the couch, presses his face into one of the throw pillows. “Maybe I was wrong,” he says.  
  
“You weren’t,” Eric says. “That’s the worst part.”  
  
Vince shakes his head and the room swirls. It’s over. That sinks in fast, in a hard nauseating wave, and suddenly he thinks he might cry. “Fuck, I can’t believe you’re leaving.”  
  
Eric’s voice is gentle, which makes Vince’s stomach hurt. “I won’t go far,” he says. Vince hears a rustle of fabric, and glances over, sees Eric sitting on the coffee table beside him. Eric doesn’t touch him, but at least he’s closer. “Look, this way, things can get back to normal, all right?”  
  
“Sure,” Vince says, but normal sounds terrible. Normal sounds like hell. They haven’t been normal since high school. He looks up at Eric’s face, leans a little bit toward him, and Eric pulls back. Vince looks at him, waiting for something in Eric’s face to change, waiting for Eric to apologize or get angry or just to want him. Instead, Eric looks tired, and a little sad, so Vince nods. “I think I need to sleep this off,” he says, rolling onto his back so he doesn’t have to look across at Eric anymore.  
  
“All right, yeah,” Eric says. He pats Vince’s shoulder as he leaves, but it feels wrong, awkward, nothing like it should be. By the time the guys come back, he’s closer to a 300 dollar investment in the scotch.  
  
“You fix things?” Turtle asks.  
  
“He’s not going far,” Vince says. “Don’t worry, it’s gonna be fine.”  
  
Eric spends most of the next day carrying boxes out of the house, and Vince spends most of it smoking up in his room, watching ESPN, and not thinking about it. It’s easier. Eric says things can go back to normal, but Vince isn’t ready for that. Not yet. Not where normal includes Eric talking sweetly to his girlfriend on the phone, or where it means that Eric doesn’t want him. Which, Vince is convinced, he’s sold, Eric’s over it. Eric, who loves being in love, Eric is through with him, and Vince can’t quite get over that.   
  
After Eric’s packed up his last box, he knocks on Vince’s door and stands just inside. “Listen,” he says, “there’s, uh, under my bed, there’s that painting from Seattle. If you want it.”  
  
Vince stands up and brushes past him without a word. He’s afraid to touch Eric, afraid to be in the same room with him. The only way things are tolerable is if he’s had enough to drink or smoke that he can relax, or if he can be somewhere that Eric’s not. That’s painful, too, because Eric’s been Vince’s guy since they were kids. He’s got no one else to turn to, no one else who understands.  
  
He grabs a fresh beer from the fridge and walks out to the pool. No touching good-bye, he thinks, no fucking way. He doesn’t come inside, even when Turtle yells that Eric’s leaving, it’s time to say good-bye.   
  


* * *

  
  
The next weekend is a holiday weekend. Eric spends it with Gillian, and Vince spends it getting wasted. July 6th he gets arrested for DUI coming home from a party that started with fireworks and multi-colored pills on the third. He’s got no license, which adds another charge, and the cop is not impressed with his attempts to grin his way out of it. So he spends a few hours in an isolation cell at the Brentwood Jail before Eric gets him bailed out. He’s still buzzed.  
  
Eric hands him a black baseball cap and sunglasses and hustles him out into the waiting car. He doesn’t say anything until the flashbulbs die off behind them.  
  
“Good party?” he asks, turning from the front seat to face him.  
  
“Not bad,” Vince says. “What I remember.”  
  
“You asshole,” Eric says. There’s no affection in his voice. Vince tries to open the window, finds it’s locked, and closes his eyes.  
  
At the house, more flashbulbs pop outside the gate. When Vince waves at them, Eric curses. “Go sleep it off,” he says, yanking open Vince’s door when they stop.   
  
“You ordering me around again?” Vince asks. “E, I didn’t think you cared.”  
  
Eric grabs his arm and propels him into the living room. “You have got to get it together,” Eric says.  
  
“Fuck you,” Vince says, and he shakes Eric off. He spreads his arms like he’s giving a speech. “Fuck you all!” It feels good to slam his bedroom door.  
  
He wakes up six hours later, showers, and sits at the kitchen table to drink one of Johnny's concoctions. This one is pink. “Where is everybody?” he asks.  
  
“Turtle went to get the car from impound,” he says.  
  
“E?”  
  
“Not sure you want to face him, yet,” Johnny says. “He was spitting fire this morning.” He slides a plate of hash browns in front of Vince; the grease glistening on top is their oldest hangover cure. “Think you interrupted something with Gillian last night.”  
  
“So what’s new,” Vince mutters. He takes his plate to the living room and turns on the television, checks the TiVo to see what he’s been missing. There are three episodes of Gillian’s show recorded. It’s a popular show, getting some notice around town, so Vince makes himself watch two while he spices up Johnny’s shake with whatever’s on hand in the bar. The show is endlessly sad, about a bunch of women getting fucked over by men, families, bosses, the world, and worst of all, each other. He can’t see anything but heartbreak at the end of this for Eric, except possibly some kind of lawsuit. He mentions this to Johnny, when he comes in.  
  
“Fuck yeah,” he says. “Girl’s gonna have his balls framed.”  
  
Vince changes to ESPN and switches to beer.  
  
Eric resurfaces that evening, slamming the front door. “You’re on house arrest,” he says, pointing at Vince.  
  
“What, like with the ankle bracelet?” Vince says.  
  
“No, like Shauna’s gonna kick your ass if you get caught on film anywhere in the next week.”  
  
“Oh, whatever,” he says, stretching out on the couch. “Jesus, what’s the big deal? I got stopped for driving too slow, E, not for running a red light or hitting a school bus or something.”  
  
“You got arrested for having a blood alcohol level over twice the legal limit, in a school zone, without a license, asshole,” Eric snaps. “You shouldn’t even be driving when you’re sober.”  
  
“He’s got a point there, bro,” Johnny says.  
  
“I’ll never do it again,” Vince says. He looks up at Eric through his lashes, puts on his best penitent face. “Come on, man, you know I’m sorry.”  
  
“No,” Eric says, “but you’re gonna be. You think New Line wants to market their big Oscar bet around a guy that’s plowing around the suburbs drunk?  
  
“Whatever, Nicholson drinks,” Vince says, and he rolls over to end the conversation.  
  
He stays home for a week, then breaks curfew going to a party at Scarlett’s place. Eric stops speaking to him except to deliver messages from Shauna and Ari, and Vince decides he doesn’t care and spends two weeks trying to get Turtle laid at every club in L.A., mostly getting himself laid instead. The girls aren’t any good, but they’re a nice distraction, and they make the time pass. Plus Eric won’t talk business in front of them, and Eric won’t say anything else to him, so days go by where Eric doesn’t exist. That’s a great break.  
  
He goes to court six weeks after the arrest. Ari hires him the most expensive lawyer in the world, and Vince wears a sober gray suit along with the same penitent expression. The judge frowns at him but has a look in his eyes like  _well, we’ve all been there_ , and hands him a hundred hours of community service, two years’ probation, and a $1000 fine.   
  
Afterwards, Ari and Eric and Shauna take him to lunch at a place in Beverly Hills. Everyone looks very serious, so Vince signals the waitress and orders a bottle of champagne.   
  
Ari says, “Hold off on that, sweetheart, champagne gives me a hard-on and I’ve already been to court once today,” and orders Vince an orange juice instead.  
  
“What the hell?” he says. “I thought we were celebrating. Problem over.”  
  
“Problem over? Problem’s just starting, Vincent,” Shauna says. “You think just because you aren’t on a chain gang everyone’s gonna forget this? Unless you’ve suddenly decided the bad boy rep is good for you.”  
  
“Oh, come on. Probation, that’s not so bad,” Vince says, leaning forward. “Hell, everyone’s on probation. Aren’t the Olsen twins on probation? It’s not like I shot a hooker for some blow.”  
  
The waitress sets his orange juice down. Eric rests his head in his hands. Vince takes a defiant sip, barely refrains from voicing his wish for a splash of vodka.  
  
“The Olsens have a billion dollars and employ an entire Polynesian nation to do their press,” Ari said. “They could _become_  hookers and shoot  _you_  for blow and still make the cover of  _People_  as America’s Sweethearts. You, on the other hand, have your whole career riding on a dressed up romantic comedy produced by a company that depends on soccer moms driving to the theater.”  
  
Vince rubs his face. “What do you want me to do, Ari? Apologize? Fine, I’m sorry.”  
  
“Vince, I don’t care if you’re sorry, because ours is a relationship without judgment, baby,” Ari says. “You hang out with midgets and retards and I say nothing. You party with skanks that couldn’t get a table at the K-Mart cafeteria, and I say nothing. You wanna get drunk and drive four miles an hour over the bodies of kindergarteners, I will loan you my car, I am up for the ride, man, right until the point that it endangers your career.”  
  
“Just tell me what you want,” Vince says. “I get it, fine, it’s very bad. What do I do?”  
  
“You go to rehab,” Shauna says.  
  
Vince laughs. “Rehab? Seriously? Guys, it was  _one night_.”  
  
“One night at the end of four months, maybe,” Shauna says. “I’ve been bending over backward trying to squash stories about you tearing shit up at every party west of the Mississippi since the end of filming. Jesus, you’re giving  _me_  a drinking problem, Vince.”  
  
Vince rolls his eyes. It’s summer. He has nothing going on, for once, just a few completely blank months in which to enjoy himself with his friends. They scheduled it this way, at the beginning of the year, when Vince went right from pulling all-nighters on the set of  _Solo_  straight to location for  _Park Place_. They even got the damn thing in on time so he and Eric would see their returns, so it would be ready for Oscar release in November. Now they’re supposed to be resting on their laurels. Just for a while. He deserves this break.  
  
He turns to Eric, who’s staring at his iced tea. “E, you think I have a problem?”  
  
“I think you have a PR problem,” Eric says. He looks up, at Shauna, not at Vince. “Tell him about the place.”  
  
“It’s basically a resort,” she says. She slides a brochure across the table. Greenfields, it says across the top, and the brochure is mostly pictures: an eternity pool, a white-sand beachfront, a long, low building overlooking the ocean, a regulation basketball court. It looks like summer camp for the rich and famous. “You go for 21 days. You swim, you lay around, and when you get out, everything’s forgiven. That’s the deal.”  
  
Ari’s drinking his water like he wishes it was gin. “You remember when Hilary Swank went to rehab?”  
  
“No,” Vince says.  
  
“Exactly. This place is quiet and it’s hooked in to the right people. You do three weeks here, the rumors dry up, everyone will understand you’re sorry, good karma is restored, blah blah blah.”  
  
“I’m gonna look like a dick,” Vince says.  
  
Eric clears his throat. “Vince, you got arrested driving drunk in someone else’s Mercedes outside of a grade school on a Wednesday morning. You already look like a dick.” Vince hears the end of that sentence – because you are a dick – and looks down.  
  
Twenty-one days is three weeks. He’ll still have plenty of time to enjoy himself before they hustle off to Austria to start filming. And maybe three weeks will be enough space between him and Eric that every conversation won’t make him feel like his heart is trying to tunnel its way out through his throat. “All right,” he says, folding the brochure and tucking it into his back pocket. “Let’s go to rehab.”  
  


* * *

  
  
The morning Eric is supposed to drive him to Greenfields, Vince wakes up with a brick in his stomach. He calls Eric to say he’s not going, he’s changed his mind.   
  
“You’re going, jerkoff, it’s a done deal. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes and I already packed your bag,” he says, before Vince even says a word, and then hangs up.   
  
Vince knocks on Turtle’s door and gets a joint for the road, then thinks about what Eric’s eyes will look like if he lights up in the car. He smokes it on the back porch, instead, until Eric catches him and throws it off the deck.  
  
“Fuck, you could start a wildfire,” Vince says.  
  
“Jesus fuck, Vince,” Eric says. He walks back into the house, and when Vince gets in the car, Turtle is in the driver’s seat, Johnny in the back, and Eric nowhere to be seen.   
  
“Fuck him, huh?” he says as they take off.  
  
“This is gonna be fine, you’ll see,” Johnny says.  
  
“Rehab’s real in right now,” Turtle agrees.  
  
“Yeah, I’d fucking kill to go to rehab.”  
  
Vince closes his eyes. He misses, as he has all summer, Eric’s dark funny commentary under it all. “Don’t kill my buzz, all right, it’s the last one I get for a while.”  
  
Johnny gets teary-eyed when they leave Vince at the front door to the Greenfields main building. “Geez, man, we ain’t been apart for this long forever,” Turtle says.  
  
“It’s three weeks, it’ll be fine,” Vince says. “Hey, look, uh, will you guys tell E I’m sorry? About this morning.”  
  
“Sure, man,” Turtle says.  
  
“Don’t worry about E, bro, you just take care of you,” Johnny says.  
  
Vince watches them pull away and his stomach flips. He puts on his best I-don’t-give-a-fuck face and walks up the marble stairs, carrying the duffle bag Eric packed for him.  
  
Greenfields is just as resort-like as Shauna described it, but it has a definite rehab creepiness to it. A tan, toned blonde wearing a black swim-suit cover-up over a green bikini introduces herself at the front desk as “Elissa, your field assistant,” and shows him to his room.  
  
The bedroom is on the second floor, with a balcony facing the water and expensive art on the walls and a good-sized attached bathroom. It would be a nice room, except there’s no TV, and there are two beds. “I have a roommate?” Vince asks.  
  
“Yes, you’re with Todd,” she says. “You’ll meet him at dinner.”  
  
Vince hasn’t had a roommate, for real, since his first year out in L.A. when he’d shared Johnny’s living room with Turtle for six months. He’s done close quarters since then with other people – well, mostly with Eric. OK, exclusively with Eric, he realizes, setting his bag on the bed. He hasn’t had to bunk with a stranger (well, unless they were fucking) since he left New York.  
  
“Aren’t there any other rooms free?” Vince asks, turning on his smile.  
  
“All of the rooms at Greenfields are shared,” she says. “We find it really helps to build a feeling of community.” She smiles, bright and wide and guileless. Vince starts to hate her. “I’ll let you settle in, then come get you for dinner.”  
  
Vince watches her leave, and only then realizes there are no doors on the bedroom. “Oh, fuck,” he mutters, sitting on the bed. Worst resort ever, he thinks. He looks around his room and feels very, very far from home. His first impulse is to call Eric, tell him to get him the fuck out of here, but they took his phone away when he checked in. Eric probably wouldn’t take the call, anyway.   
  
“Nothing about this doesn’t suck,” he mutters, then starts unpacking.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
He lays low the first night and meets his roommate, Todd, just before bed time. He’s thirty-something, fit and sheepish looking, an executive at an electronics company. Vince recognizes him vaguely. Eric would be able to place him in a second, he’s sure. “So, how is it?” he asks. “You been here long?”  
  
“A week,” Todd says, shrugging. “Everyone’s pretty chill.”  
  
“Which step are you on?”  
  
“Nah, man, it’s nothing like that,” Todd says. “It’s pretty easy. They give you a schedule, and you follow it.”  
  
That sounds like every day on every set. He’s used to trusting others with directions — no, really, he’s used to trusting Eric. Things have been too out of whack for them, since Seattle, so he’s been off schedule and, maybe, off track this summer. But he can do this, easy. He goes to bed feeling pretty sure the three weeks will fly by after all, and with such ease that he’ll be able to rub it in Eric’s face when he gets out.  
  
He wakes up on his first full day at 7, as scheduled, and follows Todd to breakfast. No one seems surprised to see him, and Vince wonders if they were briefed. Then again, there are a few faces he recognizes around the table – which is nice, a large, family-style dining table with about 16 chairs around it – so maybe everyone here is really just immune to fame. Fine by him. He eats a stack of pancakes and has two glasses of pomegranate juice, which, Todd informs him, is fresh-squeezed, and makes idle conversation with a woman who played the mother on a sitcom for four years when Vince was a kid.  
  
After breakfast they have an hour off to shower and get dressed for the day. The bathroom, Vince is pleased to find, has a door, though no lock. They have Kiehl’s products and an electric razor, which is good, because either they weren’t allowed to bring any of that or Eric wanted him to go three weeks without washing. When he comes out, he dresses in a T-shirt and jeans and wanders out to the main living room, where some of the guys are watching a tennis match. There’s a fridge in the kitchen that they have free access to, a huge plasma television with a solid DVD library, a good selection of games and gaming consoles, and the pool is always open. At ten and three and eight, there are Pilates classes in the basement, with cardio equipment available the rest of the time. Vince decides this will be better than easy.   
  
After lunch, though, Elissa takes him to the south end of the house, which is still nicely decorated but distinctly more office-feeling. She leads him to the far door and knocks twice, then says, “I’ll see you at dinner,” and leaves.  
  
Vince walks in. A woman with black hair, cut bluntly just above the shoulders, looks up from her desk. He guesses her at around forty, and gauges his smile accordingly. “I was told to come see you?” he says, stepping inside.  
  
“Vincent, of course,” she says, extending her hand. When he shakes it, she has a firm grip. “I’m Margot, I’ll be your counselor. Please, take a seat.”  
  
He shakes his head but does as he’s told. “Counselor? That’s fine, Margot, but I should let you know something up front. I don’t actually have a problem.”  
  
“Then why are you here, Vincent?”  
  
He shrugs. “My people said I needed some time away.” He takes a little pleasure in not saying Eric’s name.  
  
“I see.” She folds her hands on the desk. Her face is as cool and blank as ever. “Why would they say that?”  
  
He shrugs again, takes more time with it. “They worry, it’s their job. I pay them pretty damn well for it, too.”  
  
“You pay people to worry about you?”  
  
“To take care of me,” he says.  
  
Now the corner of her mouth lifts. “You aren’t capable of taking care of yourself?”  
  
He rolls his eyes. “I do all right,” he says. “But the point is, I don’t have to. I’m a multi-million dollar business, you know? It’s good to have some help with that.”  
  
“Yes, help can be a valuable thing,” she says. She smiles, a bland, meaningless smile. “Well, Vincent, I think we’re going to do fine, here.”  
  
“So I can go?”  
  
She nods. “Whenever you’d like. But come back tomorrow at the same time.”


	2. Chapter 2

He goes to see Margot every day for the first week, and he says nothing and she says nothing and then he leaves. It’d be like dating if they were having sex. He spends the rest of the time playing Wii and swimming and regretting the rule that says he can’t bang any of his fellow rehabees, because a couple of the girls are kind of hot. He thinks one of them is maybe a Hilton cousin.  
  
In the afternoons after his sessions, he lays on the beach and thinks about what the guys may be up to. Turtle and Johnny are probably at their usual loose ends, trying to get in at this party or with that girl. Turtle’s been seeing a girl from the Valley recently, so maybe he’s spending some time over there. Eric is probably hanging out with Gillian, going around town in the car Vince bought him, making calls in Vince’s name, keeping everything afloat. Vince smiles and shakes his head. If anyone needs three weeks of time out, it’s Eric, he decides, then rolls over to make sure he tans evenly.  
  
The thing is, he’s always been Eric’s vacation. He’s always been the one who says, time to slow down, E, time to relax. It was always their thing, from the time they were teenagers on. It was what made the thing between them work: Vince needed Eric, and Eric needed to relax. It made things a fair trade. Fuck, without him, Eric was probably going to never take a vacation again, particularly with Gillian on his arm. They’d probably be billionaires by forty, dead by fifty. Vince tries to laugh at the idea, but he just feels sad, and he misses Eric, suddenly, in a way that usually makes him reach for a bottle. For the first time since arriving, he really misses the careful numbness he’s been coasting on all summer.  
  
A whistle blows at the house, and Vince pushes up from his towel and wanders back to the stairs. A scary-thin girl in a very small bikini climbs the stairs just in front of him, then looks over her shoulder at the top and catches him eyeing her ass. “Shame about those rules, isn’t it?” she says.  
  
“It always is,” he says, and smiles as though he would fuck her, could fuck her, without breaking her into pieces.  
  
On Saturday he has a session with Margot in the morning. “How are you?” she asks.  
  
“Bored.”  
  
She leans forward. “Tired of video games and swimming? What do you usually do for fun?”  
  
He shrugs. “Party,” he says.  
  
“So you’re having difficulty having fun without the alcohol?” she asks.  
  
“That’s not – I knew you’d say that,” he says, angry at himself for walking right into it. “I miss the people, OK, not the booze.”  
  
“Who do you miss, specifically?”  
  
“My guys,” Vince says. He spends the rest of their session telling her about the boys: how Johnny always has his back, no matter what; how Turtle is the most optimistic kid he’s ever known, always ready to see the opportunity in this or that turn; and then he starts to tell her about Eric, how he’s maybe the smartest guy Vince has ever met, how he’s made everything happen for him over the past few years. He starts to tell her about Eric and then he has to stop.  
  
“I can see why you would miss him,” she says.  
  
Vince shrugs. “It’s just three weeks, right?” he says, and then he leans in, elbows on his knees. “I’m really only here because of Eric. He said I should do this.”  
  
“Well, he does sound like a smart guy.”  
  
“Yeah,” Vince agrees. He fidgets with the bottle of water in his hands. “So is that it, enough for today? Can I get back to my games?”  
  
The next day, he goes in for a morning session and Margot says, “Let’s talk about Eric.”  
  
“What about Eric?” Vince asks, wary.  
  
“What would you like to talk about?”  
  
“I’d like to talk about getting out of here,” he says, honestly. “I’d like to have that conversation.”  
  
“I’m sure that’s true,” she says. “What is it about this that makes you so uncomfortable, Vince?”  
  
“It’s just, I don’t belong here,” he explains. “I’m not like this. I’m not that Hollywood party boy.”  
  
“But you do party,” she says. “You like to party. You enjoy it, you said it’s the main thing you do.”  
  
He shifts in his seat. “Not all the time. I work, you know? Last year I worked 200 days, 90 on one film, a hundred and ten on the other. That’s not counting the press rounds afterwards, or the dubbing, or any of that stuff. And those aren’t 9-to-5 days, either, that’s 14, sometimes 18 hours on set, and then up again to do the same shit all over. I work hard, why can’t I get some time off? What’s so wrong with that?”  
  
“Nothing is wrong with taking some time to relax,” Margot says. “But you said your friends were worried about you. And from what you’ve told me, you value your friends’ opinions quite a bit. So, do you think they were right to be worried?”  
  
“No,” he says, but it’s automatic. He remembers Eric’s face on the morning he left, his pinched eyes and tight, down-turned mouth. “I don’t know.”  
  
“Good,” Margot says. “That’s a good place to start.”  
  


* * *

  
  
In the second week, he keeps seeing Margot every day. They talk about the partying. They talk about Eric. They talk about Ari, and Shauna, and the movies coming up. They talk more about Eric. They even talk about Vince’s ass. Vince tells her things he’s never told anyone, not even his mother. He tells himself he’s telling her just to pass the time, just because it makes her happy. He has made a life, after all, out of keeping people entertained.  
  
He starts spending his afternoons in his room, lying on his bed, listening to the radio and trying not to think.  
  
On Friday, Margot lets him make a call out. He thinks about calling Eric, but calls someone he knows will answer, instead.  
  
“Vince, baby, what is up? You on the advanced track, is that why I’m getting this call? My boy is gifted!”  
  
Vince smiles at the undercurrent of panic in Ari’s voice. “Everything’s fine, Ari,” he says. “Don’t worry, all right? I just wanted to check in.”  
  
“Yeah, man, I’m glad you did. Everything’s fine, here, but it’s just good to hear your voice, Vince. You doing OK out there? You nailed all your counselors yet?”  
  
“Sure,” Vince says. “Hey, look, can you tell the guys I’m all right, and make sure they know when to pick me up?”  
  
“I’m seeing E this afternoon, I’ll let him know.”  
  
Vince swallows. “Yeah, E, really? How’s he doing?”  
  
“Just fine, he’s a fucking machine. Ready to have you back, like we all are. Listen, don’t worry about E, worry about me, all right? Every night you’re away is one more night I have no excuse to stay away from the wife.”  
  
“All right, Ari,” Vince says, grinning. “Look, I’ve gotta go.”  
  
“Arts and crafts time? Build me a yacht out of popsicle sticks, pal, and you’ll still be my favorite when you get out.”  
  
“Anything for you, Ari.”  
  
“That’s the love, baby. You take care.”  
  
“All right.”  
  
He hangs up with a smile on his face. Margot says, “Good talk?”  
  
“Same old Ari,” he says, settling back in his chair. “They’re all fine.”  
  
“Does that bother you?”  
  
He shrugs. “He misses me,” he says. “We’re friends, that’s part of the deal, right? You’re friends because you like being around them; you miss them when you can’t be.”  
  
“Like you miss your friends.”  
  
Vince nods. “It sounds dumb, I know, but those guys – we’ve barely been apart for my whole life. E grew up next door to me, you know? He was always there.”  
  
“Until recently,” she says, and Vince shrugs. “You’ve talked about how things have changed, but what do you think happened?”  
  
“We took this trip,” he says, but he can’t say much more. He can’t tell her about having two days where he was just a guy, again, where he could have been anyone in the world. He can’t tell her about the five minutes where Eric forgot everything else, and how it’s never going to be that good, ever again. “I have all this money,” he says, trying to start again, but there’s nowhere to go from that, either. “I just, this is who we are,” he says, finally.  
  
“Is that so bad?”  
  
He frowns and stands up. No way is he answering that one. “I’m going to go,” he says, and walks out.  
  


* * *

  
  
They go in circles for the rest of his time, more about the parties, more about the drinking, and Vince talks about that honestly so he doesn’t have to think about Eric. On Saturday morning, he signs himself out, his three weeks finished. Todd, who’s in for an extended stay, wishes him luck at the door, and Margot gives him her card. “If you want to keep going,” she says.  
  
Vince slides it into his pocket and picks up the bag and walks outside. Eric is waiting in his car.  
  
“Hey,” Vince says, taking the passenger’s seat.  
  
“Hey.” Eric pulls out of the drive smoothly. He looks good. He looks the same, Vince realizes, but he still looks good. “So how was it?”  
  
“All right,” Vince says, shrugging. “It was relaxing.” Eric nods. “How are things?”  
  
“Fine,” he says. “Everything’s cool with New Line, everything’s cool with Shauna. You are good to go again, and the lawyer worked some deal where you going to rehab counts in place of your community service.”  
  
“Yeah?” Vince leans back. “I was kind of getting used to the idea.”  
  
“Well, Shauna thinks you should do a PSA later this year.”  
  
Vince nods. He feels tired and fragile, worried that Eric can tell he’s been talking about him for two weeks. “I could,” he says.   
  
“You OK?” Eric asks.  
  
“Yeah,” Vince says. “I didn’t think you’d come get me.”  
  
Eric shrugs. “The other guys are setting up some kind of coming home thing. Not a party,” he says, quickly, too quickly, “just, you know, Drama’s cooking something.”  
  
“Cool,” Vince says. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been away from all of you for this long before.”  
  
Eric looks over. “We missed you, too, man.”  
  
Vince smiles. It doesn’t hurt. “You look good, by the way.”  
  
“I look the same,” Eric says. “You look pretty tan.”  
  
Just the relief he feels, at having an easy conversation with Eric, makes it seem like he can breathe again. Vince settles back into his seat. “They had a nice beach.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Johnny’s cooked pot roast, their grandmother’s special recipe, with mashed potatoes and corn and everything. Vince hugs him and feels like hugging the meat. Instead, he takes a huge helping onto his plate and makes the best appreciative noises he can when he takes his first bite.  
  
“Plenty more where that came from, bro,” Johnny says, and Vince grins.  
  
“Yeah, this guy’s been cooking all day,” Turtle says. “And it’s smelled good since like noon.”  
  
“Didn’t they feed you in that place?”  
  
“Yeah, it was fine,” Vince said. “Actually, they had a really good chef, this woman who was, like, a chef for the stars until she had a melt down and ended up at Greenfields for treatment. She says she owed the place so much she decided to stick around, make things even better. Real nice woman.” He looks up and sees Eric looking back at him, a curious expression on his face. “But she couldn’t have done this, Johnny, this is fantastic.”  
  
“Well, hey, nothin’s too good for my little bro,” Johnny says. “Which reminds me – Turtle, you forget, man?”  
  
“I ain’t forgetting, it’s on ice like you said, Jesus.” Turtle gets up and walks into the kitchen, and when he comes out he’s holding a bottle of champagne. “Cristal, baby,” he says. “Toast you home in style.”  
  
Vince swallows. His mouth feels a little dry. His last session with Margot, she said, “What’s important is to understand if you have a problem, Vince. Is it something you can say no to?”  
  
Turtle pours him the first glass, and Vince has his fingers around the stem before he can even think. He holds them there, doesn’t lift the glass from the table, just looks down. It could be fine, he thinks, he could just have this one drink, just to celebrate being home. He’s with the guys and they’ll take care of him. Only maybe he needs to take care of himself. He lifts the glass and clinks it with everyone else’s, but sets it down without taking a sip, and later he knocks it over when he reaches for seconds. “No, don’t worry about it,” he says, when Turtle wants to get him a new glass, “I need to save all the room I can for food.”  
  
After dinner, Johnny shoos Vince out of the kitchen, and Eric follows. Vince laughs as he hears Turtle’s complaints – he can’t tell what he’s saying, but recognizes the tone. “Same old guys, huh?” he says, walking onto the balcony.  
  
Eric leans back, facing him. “Pretty much,” he says. “So what’s up?”  
  
Vince shrugs. He braces his arms on the balcony. “I think I have a problem, E.”   
  
Eric nods. “I know,” he says, and Vince looks over. Eric doesn’t look surprised at all, just sort of wary.  
  
Vince shakes his head. “You knew?”  
  
“You were drunk or high every day for four months,” Eric says. “That was a big clue.”  
  
Vince rests his head on the railing. “My dad,” he says, and suddenly Eric’s hand is on his shoulder, his grip strong.  
  
“You aren’t your pop,” Eric says. “All right? You aren’t anything like that.”  
  
“Yeah,” Vince says, but he doesn’t feel certain. “So what do I do now?”  
  
Eric shrugs. “I don’t know, what do you want to do?”  
  
That’s a question too dangerous to answer, and not one he’s used to having from Eric. Vince pulls back from the rail. “I guess, uh, I should maybe keep going to these meetings,” he says.  
  
“I’ve heard good things about one in Beverly Hills. Robin Williams goes, so it’s probably a good time,” Eric says, and Vince shakes his head.  
  
“Not that kind of meeting,” he says. “Uh, with this woman. Margot. From the place.” He takes the card from his pocket. “Therapy?”  
  
Eric looks at the card. “Yeah, all right,” Eric says.  
  
Vince catches Eric’s arm before he can walk away. “Don’t tell the guys, OK?”  
  
“I’ll drive you myself,” Eric says.  
  
That’s how it works for a month. Vince goes to see Margot twice a week at her private practice building while Eric sits outside. “I’m literally bringing my problems to your doorstep,” he says when she remarks on it.  
  
“You see Eric as a problem?”  
  
And so he tells her everything: about hooking up in high school, about the way the need has always built in him, an exquisite kind of want and misery that’s made him, he thinks, a better actor but a shitty person. He tells her about getting caught in Queens, he tells her about one time, after that, when a football player at their school called him a fairy and split his lip and how he had to lie to the guys – to Turtle and Eric and everyone – and say he got hit playing pick-up ball with guys from the stage crew. He tells her about random hook-ups in L.A. and then how Eric moved out and things were better, how suddenly he could go to Eric when he needed to and everything was quiet and OK. And then how things got too serious, how it was terrifying all the time, and how he decided, for once in his life, to be the grownup and end things before they got worse.  
  
“Vince, do you think you might be homosexual?” she asks.  
  
“No, I like girls,” he says, instantly frustrated. Is she not  _listening_? “I love girls.”  
  
“That doesn’t mean –“  
  
“Yes it does,” he says, and he gets up and walks out of the office and down to Eric’s car. He climbs in and doesn’t look at Eric, just stares at the dashboard. His heart is pounding like he’s just run a marathon.  
  
“Uh, good session?” Eric asks.  
  
“Let’s go,” Vince says. He concentrates on keeping his eyes wide open and staring straight up, because there’s wetness there and he doesn’t want it to spill. His sunglasses are back at Margot’s office.  
  
Eric pulls out of the parking lot and into traffic, driving slow just when Vince thinks there’d be nothing better than to feel some speed. He rolls down the window and leans into the breeze, and that gives him the excuse to rub his eyes that he needs. He closes his eyes and tries to ignore the smog around him, tries to find the perfect angle at which he’ll get a whiff of sweet air, something clean.  
  
“Where are we going?” Eric asks.  
  
“Wherever,” Vince says, not even sure Eric can hear him over the wind.  
  
They end up in a parking garage. Vince feels the change from heat to cool and opens his eyes too late to know where they’ve stopped. Eric winds the car up and up, until they reach a nearly empty level at the top. “What are we doing?” Vince asks.  
  
“You tell me,” Eric says, shutting off the car, the keys still in the ignition. “What’s going on? You look bad.”  
  
Vince shrugs. “I’m fine,” he says, but even in his own ears his voice sounds wrong – too fast, too high. Too panicked. He looks out the windshield but there’s nothing there but concrete. “Where the fuck are we?”  
  
“Someplace quiet,” Eric says. “Vince, talk to me. I’m worried about you, man.”  
  
“You shouldn’t,” Vince says. He concentrates on the words this time, makes them come out smooth and slow. “I’m fine.” He reaches out to flip on the radio, and Eric catches his wrist.  
  
“Don’t,” he says.  
  
Vince glances down. He pulls his hand back and away and then cradles his wrist. “Do you remember, Matty’s car,” he starts.  
  
“Yeah,” Eric says. He shakes his head. “Sorry. This was – not the best place –“  
  
“I told her,” Vince says.  
  
“Your therapist?”  
  
He nods.  
  
“You still think about that?” Eric asks.  
  
“No,” Vince says. “I don’t know. I –“ he stops again. He can’t look at Eric, so he watches just his hand. “Maybe they were right,” he says. “I think they were right about me.”  
  
“Who?” Eric says. Vince shrugs. “Those – Vince, they were kids. We were all kids. It was stupid, they were –“  
  
“I wasn’t messing around,” Vince says. “Eric. It was never just messing around, for me.” There’s no good reason to rub his eyes now, except that he’s trapped, the world feels like it’s going to push him flat, like it’s already steamrolling across his chest. He’s fucked up and can’t fall much further, and Eric’s the only one in the world that he would ever cry in front of, without getting paid. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m a fucking mess, huh?”  
  
Eric’s hand rests on his biceps. “Vince,” he says, his voice deep, sorrowful, a little afraid. “I don’t know what to say.”  
  
“I know,” Vince says. He shakes his head, and Eric’s hand falls away. That answers almost every question he has. “It’s fine.” He closes his eyes and takes a few long, deep breaths, tries to get centered, tries to get calm. When he opens his eyes again, he looks right at Eric and makes himself smile. “OK, freak out over,” he says. “Therapy, man, it fucking blows.”  
  
“I guess,” Eric says.  
  
Vince turns to face forward in his seat, and Eric seems to take the hint and restarts the car. They pull out, and Vince waits until Eric’s busy navigating a curve to turn on the radio. His eyes feel dry and burnt, and when they pull into the sunshine, he says, “Can I borrow your shades?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
They don’t touch at all when Eric passes them over, but that’s all right. That’s just fine.  
  


* * *

  
  
Eric takes Vince home, and then he follows him in and watches him with wide worried eyes that Vince is first pleased by and then annoyed with. “I’m not going to dive into a bottle, E,” Vince says, from the safety and comfort of the couch. “I’m fine.”  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
He stays, sitting at the other end of the couch, until Turtle and Johnny come in. “What’s the big fucking emergency, man?” Turtle says, looking at Eric, and Vince groans.  
  
“I don’t need a babysitter!” he yells, and the other two guys look at him like he’s crazy. “Look, guys,” Vince says. He’s so fucking tired of secrets. “I’m just, for a while I’m trying not to drink, OK? I’ve been going through some stuff, I’ve been talking to somebody about it, things are going to be fine again but I just need to cool it for a while.”  
  
Turtle just shrugs, and Johnny says, “Yeah, we figured, when you passed up going to Noveau last week.”  
  
Vince glances at Eric, but Eric’s looking away. “So we’re cool?” Vince says, looking instead at the guys.  
  
Turtle slaps his hand. “Whatever you need, man.”  
  
Before Eric leaves that night, he stops Vince in the kitchen by catching his arm. Vince tightens his abs, concentrates on filling a glass with water, on not turning to face Eric immediately. It’s the first time they’ve touched since the car. All night, Eric’s been looking at him funny, keeping his distance physically but watching him, his hard, frightened stares making Vince feel uncomfortable. He’s starting to feel something he’s never felt around Eric before: embarrassed. The scene in the car plays for him again, and Vince is sorry for it all, because of the way Eric’s looking at him, treating him. It was better when he was drinking and Eric was angry. Anger, at least, he knew how to deal with. This, the way Eric’s looking at him like he’s breakable, fragile, like he’s falling apart, it’s making Vince feel it. He’s used to taking his cues from Eric.  
  
“You OK?” Eric asks.  
  
Vince nods and sips from his glass. The water feels conspicuous, like another sign that he’s not OK. He wants to set it on the counter, but he doesn’t want Eric to move away. He doesn’t want to frighten either of them.  
  
“That — you, in the car, today,” Eric says, and he draws his hand away to rub his face. Vince can practically hear him trying to settle himself down. He sets the water down and turns, slowly, one hip against the counter. He’s just close enough inside Eric’s personal space that he feels a little warm tickle in his chest.   
  
“Yeah?” Vince says, slow, low.  
  
Eric crosses his arms, and as he speaks he takes a step back. Vince holds himself perfectly still, doesn’t wince or flinch as Eric moves away. “You want to talk?” Eric says.  
  
Vince shrugs. “I’m fine,” he says. “E, please, OK? Believe me.”  
  
“I know, I know,” Eric says, but he doesn’t loosen his arms. He doesn’t step away, either. “You really mean it, though? You think — what you said in the car —”  
  
“I can’t,” Vince says, too fast but he really can’t. He can’t hear Eric say whatever he’s going to say, he can’t come up with answers. “OK? Not right now.”  
  
Eric nods. “All right,” he says. He starts to turn, and Vince reaches for his water glass, again, something to do with his hands. Eric pauses at the door. “Listen,” he says, his voice quiet but sharp. He’s not even looking at Vince. “You aren’t, uh, are you going to tell them –“  
  
“No,” Vince says. “There’s nothing to tell, right?”  
  
Eric shrugs. Vince pastes on a smile, makes his hand wave fluidly, pats Eric’s shoulder. “No worries, E,” he says.  
  
Eric nods again, tries on a smile of his own that’s just as fake. After he leaves, Vince hangs out with the other guys for a while, not talking, not thinking, just listening, and then he goes up to his room. He crawls under his blankets, puts his head on the pillow, closes his eyes and lets the wanting just overwhelm him. His stomach hurts with it. Of course those guys were right about him. He wants Eric and he’s always wanted him, and for the first time in fifteen years, he’s absolutely alone with it.  
  


* * *

  
  
He has Turtle drive him to his next appointment with Margot. They talk about the episode in E’s car, and she seems very pleased about it. “Do you work on commission, or something, because I think E may be traumatized.”  
  
She actually laughs. “I have excellent group rates,” she assures him.  
  
The next night is a Friday. Turtle looks at Vince skeptically, nervously. “You wanna go out?” he asks.  
  
Vince pauses, really thinks about it. “Yeah,” he says, after a moment. “I think I would.”  
  
They go to a club and Vince orders a vodka tonic because he hates the taste. He sits at a table and a girl curls up next to him and her hands offer him everything he could ask for. He’s good at the brush-off, though; no, he’s great at it. When she finishes her drink, he offers to get the next round and then goes to the bar and stays there, drinking ice water with a lime in it.   
  
The bartender is familiar, a guy who worked a party for Vince once, so he just settles at the end and talks to him. The place is packed, wall-to-wall people, four-deep at the bar but the bartender, Ted, makes time, and Vince realizes pretty quickly Ted is flirting. That’s nothing unusual. Guys do it all the time, and it doesn’t bother him. In fact, he’s always kind of enjoyed it. Tonight, though, he feels a quick flutter of nervousness, because he could do something about it. He could flirt back — hell, he could get laid. Since Eric’s been in L.A., he hasn’t touched another guy; he’s looked, a little, but he’s always told himself it’s just academic, always taken attraction to other guys as a sign that it’s about time to hook up with Eric again. Now, though, there’s no Eric alternative. Vince’s palms start to sweat; when Ted refills his water glass, though, he smiles and lets his fingers meet Ted’s when he hands the glass back. It surprises Vince to feel a flicker of desire down his spine at the touch.  
  
The girl from the booth appears at his shoulder, and her voice is an offended, kittenish whine. “Vince, I thought you were getting a drink?”  
  
He’s looking at Ted, still grinning, and he knows he can get rid of the girl right now. He turns his head, without looking away from Ted, and starts to say, “Not tonight, OK, baby?” but then a hand falls on his shoulder.  
  
“We gotta split,” Turtle says, “or Drama’s gonna have to box some guy.”  
  
Vince laughs. He apologizes to both the girl and then to Ted, who gives a philosophical shrug.  
  
“Next time, I’ll get you a real drink,” he says, and Vince raises an eyebrow as he nods.  
  
“Looking forward to it,” he says.  
  
In the car, the first thing he feels is relief. His hands are shaking. It would have been that easy. He wants to tell someone, suddenly, wants to go back over the whole evening, the girl, Ted, everything. But it’s only Turtle and Johnny in the car; the person he wants to talk to, Eric, is nowhere nearby, and even if he was, they’ve never talked about this stuff. They never talked about it when it was them, even.  
  
The next morning, Vince gets up early. Turtle’s still asleep, of course, Johnny’s at his own place, and so the house is quiet. Vince doesn’t like it. He wishes Eric were there, at the kitchen table, so they could talk about the night before. There’s an easy fix to that, though, so Vince puts on his running shoes and takes off. Things are supposed to be back to normal for them. They’re adults and they’re friends and they should be able to talk about things. Eric has always been there for him, before.  
  
He’s outside Eric’s condo in ten minutes, but before his hand can fall on the door, he hears Gillian laughing inside. Gillian. Eric’s girlfriend. Vince takes a step back, and then another, and then he’s back in front of Eric’s building and he can barely breathe. They can’t talk about this, Vince can’t fix this, he’s going to be alone forever. Things are as normal as they’re ever going to be. He sits on the curb and calls a cab, and it takes him to Margot’s office.   
  
Vince sits on her couch and tells her about the guy at the club and he starts crying. He can’t stop. Twice in one week. He feels like a train wreck.  
  
Margot says, “Do you think, if you told Eric how you feel -”  
  
“I did,” Vince says. “I’ve done everything I can. I ended it, I guess I have to deal with that, huh?”  
  
“You’re on the way,” Margot says. “I think it might really help you to talk to Eric, though. You need someone you can talk to.”  
  
“What do I pay you for?” he asks, wiping his eyes, and she smiles, and then he laughs. “OK,” he says, ready to try anything, to take any direction, “I’ll try.”  
  
“That’s all you can do.”  
  
On the way home, Vince calls Eric’s cell. “Can we get lunch?” he asks. “Just us.”  
  
“Sure. The Palm?”  
  
“No, come by the house,” Vince says. “I’ll pick something up.”  
  
He gets a pizza delivered and sends Johnny and Turtle out for the afternoon. Eric walks in after an hour and says, “Hey.”  
  
Vince nods. He’s sitting at the dining table, sipping water, not really ready for this. But he says, “I need to talk to you.”  
  
“OK,” Eric says. He sits across from him and shuffles a piece of pizza onto his plate. “You read the Hood script?”  
  
“No,” Vince says. He takes a deep breath. “I, uh, last night I went out with Turtle and Johnny.”  
  
Eric frowns. “You drinking again?”  
  
“No,” he says. “But I — E, I almost hooked up with the bartender.” Eric looks puzzled. “Ted, the bartender,” Vince says, and Eric flinches. “I went to your place this morning, I thought I wanted to talk about it, but maybe — I don’t know. Maybe it’s just an old habit. But I — I need someone I can talk to about this stuff, and you’re my best friend, E. I mean, I think.”  
  
“You’re — what are you talking about?”  
  
Vince shrugs. “I miss you,” he says, and he feels close to crying again. Fucking therapy, he thinks, and takes a quick sip of his water. “You know?”  
  
Eric squints. He plays with his pizza. “I — things have been kind of weird, huh?”  
  
“Kind of, yeah,” Vince says. “You know, I get why you moved out, and all, I do, like, remove yourself from the situation, all of that, but — I feel like I don’t even see you anymore. And I don’t mean, I’m not trying to take time away from Gillian.” He makes himself smile, a little, tries to look serious. “But we used to hang out.”  
  
Eric nods. He takes a slow, deep breath. “There’s hanging out, and there’s  _hanging out_ ,” he says, and he raises an eyebrow.  
  
“I’m not talking about the sex,” Vince says, though God, he misses that, too. He misses that enough that he wants to reach across the table and grab Eric’s hand, touch his wrist or the corded muscle on his forearm. “I’m talking about actually being friends, E.”  
  
“We are,” Eric says quickly, and Vince tips his head to the side. “I guess, I don’t get what you’re asking,” he says.  
  
Vince shrugs. “I want things to be OK with us,” he says. “I want to be able to talk to you, again.” Eric stares down at his pizza, and Vince reaches out, taps the table next to his plate. “E?”  
  
“Yeah,” he says. He looks up. “I want that, too.”  
  
“So, OK,” Vince says. “Then we gotta work on it.”  
  
Eric laughs, just quickly. “Jesus, you’re getting your money’s worth from Margot, huh?”  
  
“I hope so,” he says, and he smiles, and Eric smiles back. Vince feels hopeful, for the first time in a long time, that maybe things can be fixed between them. He gets a piece of pizza for himself and asks Eric about his day, about Gillian’s projects at the moment. Eric talks slowly, at first, but eventually they’re just talking like always. Vince laughs at Eric’s description of Ari’s reaction to Gillian’s latest salary request and doesn’t feel bad about it, knows he’s supposed to laugh.   
  
When he goes for a second piece, Eric says, “You should’ve gone lighter on the cheese,” and Vince agrees but takes the piece anyway.  
  
As he’s chewing, he realizes Eric is looking at him, puzzled again. “What?”  
  
“You really almost hooked up with that bartender?”  
  
Vince shrugs. “I could’ve,” he says. “I didn’t.”  
  
Eric nods. “Is that something I need to worry about?” he asks.  
  
Vince sets his slice down. “I don’t know,” he says. “You asking as my manager or my ex?”  
  
Now Eric tips his head to the side. “Manager,” he says, finally, and Vince nods.  
  
“Maybe,” he says. “Not yet, though. I’m not really ready.” He’s not really over Eric, is the truth. “Don’t worry, I’ll talk to you.”  
  
“OK,” Eric says. He eats a few bites. The silence that settles between them isn’t perfectly comfortable, but it’s not terrible, so Vince lets it go. He can practically see the wheels turning in Eric’s head, and he’s not surprised when Eric sets his pizza down and looks up. “You really think of me as your ex?” he asks.  
  
Vince shrugs. “What would you call it?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Eric says. It seems like a completely honest answer, and Vince respects that. He’s glad for it.  
  
“Friends though, right?” he says, and Eric nods and meets his eyes. It feels like the first time he’s done that since they left for Seattle. They hit fists across the table, and Vince grins.  
  
“So, this work we have to do,” Eric says, “how do we start?”  
  
“Just like this,” Vince says.  
  


* * *

  
  
Things get easier. Not perfect, but easier. Eric starts spending more time at the house, and they start spending more time together. Sometimes, before Vince goes to see Margot, they get lunch together, or they hang out at home while the other guys go out. Eric still sees Gillian, but not as much, and Vince isn’t sure if there’s trouble there or if Eric just used to say he was seeing her in order to avoid Vince. He doesn’t ask, because although they’re friends again, there are some things Vince doesn’t want to talk about.  
  
He goes to see Margot one afternoon and tells her this, and she says, “So you still have romantic feelings for Eric?”  
  
“Yeah,” he says. It’s not so hard to say. “I think, maybe I always will. But we’re friends still, at least I’ve got that, and that’s OK.”  
  
“That’s enough?”  
  
Vince shrugs. “For now,” he says. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind finding someone else, eventually, to be with. But for now, I think I need to get over him, a little more, and feel a little better about things.”  
  
Margot nods. At the end of the session, she says, “If you’d like to cut back, I think that would be OK.”  
  
“Once a week?” he asks.  
  
“Or every other week,” she says, and he agrees.   
  
When he mentions it to Eric that evening, Eric says, “Yeah?” and Vince nods. “I’m proud of you,” Eric says, and his hand stays on Vince’s shoulder for a moment, and Vince thinks,  _so not over you_ , but he smiles back and pats Eric on the ribs.  
  
A few days later, Turtle drives Vince in for a morning meeting with Ari and Eric is late. “No fucking wonder,” Ari says, while Vince sits on the couch and watches him pace. “Kid’s probably afraid to show his face. Shit, I am afraid of nothing and even I would be packing the boys in titanium after this.”  
  
“What’s that?”  
  
Ari stops and stares at Vince. “You don’t know? You – maybe he decided to spare the innocent?”  
  
“English, Ari,” Vince says. “And slowly. What’s E done?”  
  
“What’s he done? Little fucker broke up with Gillian Raines. Suddenly our dark comedy on HBO is going to look like a suicide instruction manual.”  
  
Vince sits up. “What?”  
  
Ari shakes his head. “I can’t believe – I thought you guys were like attached at the brain or something.” He rubs his hands together. “Maybe it’s a joke? A sick fucking joke? Did E grow a sense of humor?”  
  
“When?” Vince asks.  
  
“Good point,” Ari says, “it’s not like he’s got a lot of spare time, between fucking her and fucking me.”  
  
“No, Ari, I mean, when did Eric break up with her?”  
  
Ari shrugs. “Yesterday, I guess. She has a script due Thursday, they were supposed to start filming, and the whole cast left in tears. I have lesbians threatening to strike, Vince, you know how that fucks up my week.”  
  
Vince hasn’t seen Eric since breakfast yesterday, and he didn’t mention anything. He wonders what’s happened, wonders where Eric is and if he’s OK. Vince puts his hand on the arm of the couch, pushes himself up, because he needs to go find Eric and hear what this is about.  
  
Eric walks in just as Vince is getting to his feet. “Sorry I’m late,” he says, and Vince just stares at him. He doesn’t look bad – not destroyed or distraught or despondent – he just looks like Eric, a little hassled but otherwise OK. Vince stays standing, and Ari whirls.  
  
“Where’ve you been, off breaking up another happy marriage?”  
  
“What’s –“  
  
“Do you understand what you’re going to owe me in therapy bills for this stunt, Eric? Jesus, what, does her pussy have teeth? Because short of seeing scars on your cock, I cannot think of a reason that you would end something as goddamned beautiful as –“  
  
Eric holds up one hand. His face is perfectly blank; Vince couldn’t act unconcerned any better than what Eric’s doing. “Ari. It’s fine. It was amiable.”  
  
“Amiable?” Ari makes it sound like a curse.  
  
“We both – “  
  
“She wants to kill Elaine’s husband on the show in a chainsaw malfunction. Do you want to guess where he bleeds to death from?”  
  
Eric sits on the couch, in the middle, right by where Vince would be sitting, if he could make himself move. “That’s got nothin’ to do with me,” he says. “Besides, what do you care, it’ll get great ratings.”  
  
Ari shakes his finger – actually fucking shakes his finger – at Eric, and that’s what makes Vince snap and turn to look at Eric full in the face. Eric’s smirking, just a little, a smile that gets a little fuzzier when Vince meets his eyes. Eric clears his throat. “Trust me, all right?” he says. “She’s fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine.”  
  
“I trust no one,” Ari says, but Lloyd brings in some coffee and he settles down. Vince takes a seat next to Eric, and he can’t stop looking at him. He tries to be easy about it, but Eric’s right there, right next to him, his shoulder brushing Vince’s when he leans forward to gesture at Ari, his knee bouncing and making Vince’s leg jitter too. But Eric’s cool, no, Eric’s fucking ice. Vince can’t figure it out, and he’s so busy paying attention to Eric that he misses almost everything Ari says.  
  
When they walk out of Ari’s office – Vince isn’t sure what happened, exactly, but he thinks mostly Eric just agreed to some kind of press campaign – Vince stays next to Eric, and he gets into Eric’s car without listening to where they’re going. “Are you OK?” he asks.  
  
Eric shrugs. “I’m fine,” he says.  
  
“Seriously, E,” Vince says. “You can talk to me about this.”  
  
“And seriously, I’m fine.” He glances over while they wait for a light to change. “Things just weren’t working out for us,” he says.  
  
Vince nods, like he understands at all. “What kind of things?”  
  
Eric snorts. “Jesus, you want to call her and ask?” Vince keeps looking at him. “It’s fine,” Eric says eventually.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I promise,” he says. “Now, where do you want to get some lunch?”  
  
Things really do seem fine. Eric doesn’t cry into his lunch or punch Turtle when he starts laughing about the breakup. Vince doesn’t ask again, but he keeps wondering. It’s never far from his mind, now, that Eric is single again, but he doesn’t mention anything because they’re getting along even better. Vince doesn’t want to mess that up.  
  
That weekend, Johnny buys steaks and spicy kielbasa and they have a cookout, just the four of them. Vince has a beer but nothing more, nothing heavier, and he sits back and listens to the guys teasing Eric about Gillian. Eric really doesn’t seem upset about it; in fact, he seems pretty happy. When Turtle and Johnny go inside for fresh drinks, Vince glances over and sees Eric looking back at him, a warm, familiar look that makes Vince’s chest feel a little tight. He sits up when he hears the back door open.  
  
“We’re out of beer,” Turtle says. “You guys wanna hit a club or something?”  
  
“You guys go ahead,” Eric says. “I’m beat.”  
  
“Yeah,” Vince says, not looking at Eric or the other guys. “I’m gonna turn in, too, I think.”  
  
“Suit yourselves,” Johnny says, and he and Turtle disappear back into the house. Vince hears the car start a few minutes later, and only then does he risk a glance over at Eric.  
  
“So,” he says, “what really happened with Gillian?”  
  
Eric laughs. “What do you think happened?”  
  
Vince says, “I don’t know, E,” and then he feels Eric’s hand on his shoulder. He looks up, and right into the same warm look from before. “Eric?”  
  
“Do you still -”  
  
“Yes,” Vince says, because whatever the question is, he does, still, he always will. Eric nods, and his thumb brushes against the back of Vince’s neck and Vince closes his eyes. He turns his head and kisses, very gently, the tender skin inside Eric’s wrist, then winds his fingers into Eric’s.  
  
“Let’s go inside,” Eric says, and Vince follows him. It’s the first time he can ever remember that they’ve actually held hands.  
  
He hasn’t had sex since he went to rehab, but it’s more than that; he feels like he hasn’t been close to anyone since Seattle, since the last time he was with Eric. So when Eric stops in the doorway of Vince’s bedroom and kisses him, Vince latches on, holds Eric close, starts to feel desperate for him, for anything. They fall back onto the bed and Vince comes apart under Eric’s hands and mouth; he makes gasping, needy noises that Eric seems to try to swallow whole. Vince starts to feel dizzy, like everything is happening too fast, so he turns them over and concentrates on undressing Eric as slowly as he can. He climbs up Eric’s body, and Eric pulls his legs up, wraps one around Vince’s waist. “I missed you, too,” he says, and Vince kisses him and kisses him.  
  
When there is no part of Eric left untouched, when Vince can barely breathe or move anymore, he lays down next to Eric, his head on the same pillow. Eric is smaller but he somehow gathers Vince up, and Vince had forgotten how much he loves this, smelling Eric’s sharp cologne and sweat. Or maybe he didn’t forget, but it’s even better than he remembered.  
  
He falls asleep fast and sleeps so hard he misses Eric getting out of bed, wakes up to an empty space beside him. His stomach twists and he has to take five slow breaths before he can make himself move. He pulls on his shorts and a T-shirt and takes another few slow breaths before he opens the bedroom door and walks to the kitchen. It’s empty, but the coffee pot is on, so Vince pours himself a cup and follows the sound of the television out to the living room.  
  
Eric is alone on the couch, reading the newspaper and sipping coffee. He looks up and smiles at Vince, a knowing, happy-to-see-you smile, and Vince feels better immediately. “Turtle crashed at Drama’s place,” he says, and Vince nods and takes a seat right next to him. He sets his coffee on the end table and then rests his head on Eric’s shoulder, and Eric puts his hand on Vince’s leg.  
  
“Why did you break up with Gillian?” Vince asks.  
  
Eric sighs. “Honestly? I kept thinking about what you said.”  
  
“What I -”  
  
“The bartender.”  
  
Vince blinks, almost grins. “Jealous?”  
  
“Maybe,” Eric says, then after a second, “yeah.”  
  
They don’t say anything for a while. Vince isn’t sure what to say, really, but he knows they need to talk. They need to work this thing out, get it together. He thinks about Eric being jealous, about what it means that Eric broke up with Gillian for him, and he starts to feel a little more confident.  
  
“So,” Vince says, quietly.  
  
“So,” Eric says. “I guess we’re doing this again.”  
  
Vince shakes his head, just a little, knowing Eric can feel it. “Not like before,” he says. “I can’t do that.”  
  
“Then what?” Eric asks. His voice is quiet, but his hand doesn’t move from Vince’s knee.  
  
“More,” Vince says. “No more of this sneaky every-couple-of-months bullshit.”  
  
He hears Eric swallow, watches his hand twitch. “Vince,” he says, “you can’t just –“  
  
“I’m not talking about coming out,” Vince says. “But I don’t want to keep waiting.”  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
“I want us, together,” Vince says. He pulls back, sits up, looks over at Eric. Eric looks perplexed and tousled and wonderful. All of this time, all of this therapy, this is all he wants, right here, this is everything he wants to say. “I’m through messing around. I’m through even calling it that. You and me, man,” he says, and he touches Eric’s face. Eric’s eyes close, and he turns and kisses the ball of Vince’s thumb. “That’s what I want.”  
  
“Hmm.” Vince watches Eric’s face, from close up, watches him open his eyes and look at Vince, really look at him. “You’re sure?”  
  
“Yes,” Vince says.  
  
“OK,” Eric says, and Vince can’t help it, he grins, big and bright like he’s just won an Oscar, only this is better. This is going to be so much better. Eric smirks. “What, you thought I’d say no?”  
  
There are a lot of things he thought Eric might say, and a lot of things he still wants to say, himself, but Vince decides now isn’t the moment for talking. Instead, he leans forward and kisses Eric, and Eric puts his arms around him and kisses him back, and it’s more than enough, it’s the perfect happy beginning.


End file.
